Where will we get all this electricity from when all the cars are electric? Let's start by reviewing where we get it all from now. There is a pie chart on the right hand panel of this blog illustrating typical american electric power sources. Coal, Oil, Natural Gas, Nuclear, Hydro-Electric, Bio-Mass, Sun, and Wind. America gets about half of our electricity from Coal and China uses more Coal than America does.
Let's also begin by simplifying what we mean when we say Climate Change to refer to the negative aspects of these power sources, and simply call it pollution instead. All of these sources pollute to one degree or another, even the manufacture of wind and solar equipment.
All of our electric power regardless of the source must be created by generators and transmitted in electric lines. Trillions of miles upon miles of copper wires are wrapped inside generators and strung along transmission lines, running through all olf the walls of buildings, every air conditioner, every heater and inside every car. As the need for electricity grows "superconducting"semi-precious metals also increases, even every electronic device has these inside them. The demand for more copper and more superconducting rare earth metals means more mining around the world.
Copper mining beacame the poster child of america's environmental movement in the 1970's so not much is produced anymore however there are copper and rare earths in America and Canada. Most of these metals are in China and elsewhere such as the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.
Solar panel, batteries and electronic devices, (phones, I-Pods etc.) also requires raw materials that must be mined in order to be manufactured. The abundance of these elements that are mined in China is one reason they make and sell so many more of all these items than the U.S. does. The good news is that each and every one of these products made with mined elements such as copper, silicon, and lithium etc. are 80% recyclable after they are made once.
So really it is a matter of comparing the risks of the downsides or each electrical power and equipment source. Would you rather go with 100% wind and solar (and maybe even tidal generation) and mining pollution from an end product that is 80% recyclable, or continue living with the mutitudes of risks, all of which are potentiallly catastrophic beyond our wildest dreams with the systems we are using now?
China os building several new coal powered plants each and every year to try and keep up with the demand, The U.S. and Canada are doing trying to do the same thing with the Keystone Pipeline from the Canadian Tar Sands to try and keep up with demand as well. Coal and Natural Gas pollute when being removed from the ground, pollute when burned to make electricity, and the leftovers from these processes pollute as well. Nuclear Uranium needs to be mined, it pollutes, and the waste not only pollutes, but there is also the risk that it could be used to make bombs. Bio-Fuels pulloute when burned and they consume agricultural land that is needed well into the future to grow food crops for an ever increasing population. (The only logical use of Bio-Fuels is capturing land fill gases and using them since they will escape into the atmosphere or blow up the landfill anyway.)
The bad news when it comes to oil drilling is that at the moment it is needed to make plastic. The good news is that once that plastic is made, it is 80% reycylable, and if oil is used exclusively for manufacturing and not as a fuel then our supply would last much, much, much, longer. We are also beginning to make plastics out of bio material so oil won't be needed to make it eventually and it too is 80% recyclable. Let's not forget that recyclable means re-usable.
The world's power industry is humankinds most recent Industrial and Economic Revolution. Coal and Oil technology is 150 and 100 years old repectively. Hydro-Electric is newer than that, and Nuclear is newer still. Wind and Solar are the newest and they are our future. The fossil fuels industry is last centuries technology and what began as a good thing is now obsolete and no longer sustainably usefull for the power demands of such a modern world. The massive damage caused by their use to the environment and the business and political correption caused by the struggle to control it cobined with a shrinking supply and growing demand has created a false and unstable economy world wide.
We need to recognize that our current fuel industries have had a poor track record environmentally, politically, and legally. That Coal and Natural Gas simply pollute way too much for it's use to make sense anymore, that there has been a cover-up, false promise, or false sense of security from the inception of the Nuclear industry. We also need to understand that the people who transmit our electricity from the generation source to each of us are Publically Owned Utilities. We own them, we live in a democracy, and we can insist that we want wind and solar energy because it pollutes the least and offers each country the most energy independence of any of the other sources.
We need to stop the coal mines and Natural Gas fracking operations right now. People employed in those area's must have priority hiring in Green Energy Solutions, after all, we have depended on them and they should be rewarded for their work. We need to mothball Nuclear Power Plants with the oldest and least safe first as they end their usefull life without building more of them. We need to mothball oil rigs with the oldest first as they too are no longer safe or usefull, and target the use of oil exclusoively for manufacturing as electric cars and solar and wind electricity gains market share world wide.
Auto makers need to start building 100's of thousands of the electric cars the show off at car shows every year instead of just a few thousand at a time or less. Charging Stations for electric cars must be franchised, small business opportunities, and installed in homes, schools, shopping area's, and offices. The same goes for wind and solar equipment. Turbines and panels must be installed in all these same places, and along every freeway interstate, street light post, parking lot, and warehouse that already exist in the world today. It is windy at the top of every tall building and solar panels could be installed vertically along the south side of every tall building. Who says that solar and wind farms "have to be laid out covering acre upon acre of land."?
Unfortunately our troops will always be deployed to protect the oil supply even if it is used exclusively as a manufacturing product, but this sort of Green Energy infrastructure investement and business opportunity will provide jobs and revive the worlds economies with a new Green Energy Economy.
When people say the word revolution, most people think of war. The revolution which gave us all the quality of life we have today was an Industrial Revolution. The most important revolution in the history of humankind is upon us right here, right now. IT IS A GREEN ENERGY SOURCE EVOLUTION. This is not simply a demand for democracy, or human rights, or a better economy, it is all of those things all wrapped up into one ideal.
A Green Power Evolution is a world wide: industrial evolution, political evolution, economic evolution, and a social evolution at at once. To anser the question, "Where will we get all of this electricity from?" --- That depends on you.
By Pete Whipple 8/26/2011
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